Hello and welcome to eczemafreeme.com. My name is Mehmet and I am the author of this, what I hope to be awesome, blog. Before we start maybe it would be wise for me to introduce myself and the reasons I decided to start this site.<\/p>\n
“In my second year of university unfortunately the\u00a0eczema came back and it came back with a vengeance”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
When I was very young (child) my brother and I both had atopic eczema, the most common type. We had the the awful red rash in the traditional places such as behind the knees and creases of of the elbows. I don\u2019t know who in my family had eczema before us but my grandmother had a bad case of asthma; eczema, hayfever and asthma are related conditions for those who don\u2019t know. \u00a0Like the majority of children we eventually grew out of it and for a number of years we were eczema free\u2026but that was to soon change.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately in my second year of university the\u00a0eczema came back, and it came back with a vengeance. It\u2019s possible it went away to study how to be a bigger piece of sh*t and with this new knowledge it became harder to shake. This time it affected the creases of my elbows, back of the knees (not so bad) and neck.<\/p>\n
So for that first year it came back I just ignored it and hoped it would go away but by the time my 3rd year of university came round I knew I had to go doctors. If your reading this blog you can probably guess what they gave: steroid cream and an emollient. Sure this helped in the short term but the results were short lived and the itching progressively got worse.<\/p>\n
“My friends made jokes that I looked like a junkie”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fast forward 2 years and the eczema has only got worse. Steroid creams have become less effective, antihistamines do nothing and the rash now affects my face, upper back (behind arms), corners of my chest (between upper chest and shoulders), lower back, side of my glutes (bum), lower abdominal area, entire neck, wrists and inner thighs. Pretty f***ing sh*t. The creases of my elbows are\u00a0almost always scratched bloody and scabbed. In fact it was to the point that university friends would\u00a0jokingly make comments about how it looks suspiciously like needle marks, great now it looks like I’m a junkie.<\/p>\n
In the following year I worked in a retail pharmacy store and in that time I tried a whole bunch of creams, emollients, bath additives and different steroids (with prescription of course) each with varying results. Some days it was good other days I was redder than the Turkish flag. So I battled each flare up as it arose and that\u2019s how that\u00a0year played out, never really clear of my eczema but bouncing between different shades of red.<\/p>\n
Fast forward another year and now I\u2019m a fully qualified pharmacist. 4 years hard work and 1 year working placement to earn the MPharm title after my name. Felt good. Thank God the stress is over, the constant pressure of exam anxiety is behind me and my eczema should clear up now. Wrong! Managing a pharmacy comes with it\u2019s own stresses and my hopes of clear skin vanished with that realisation.<\/p>\n
Four\u00a0years on I\u2019m fed up with my eczema and my strategy of hope it goes away has clearly failed. I\u2019m determined now to tackle it head on and this blog is a documentation of my efforts.<\/p>\n
Why I\u2019m in a good position to write this blog<\/h2>\n
As a pharmacist (and eczema sufferer) with over 5 years working experience under my belt I have seen, studied and heard of many traditional and non traditional treatments. The western medicine approach is what I am most\u00a0aware of and any drug your doctor can prescribe I\u2019ve most likely studied it. Unfortunately western medicines mostly aims to treat the symptoms and rarely addresses the underlying cause because we simply do not know what that is. In addition the more potent treatments outside of creams inhibit your immune system making you more susceptible to infection and illness, no thanks. \u00a0I believe in evidence based medicine but approach healthcare from a holistic perspective. I believe the food we eat can dramatically affect how our bodies respond and I keep an open mind about complementary therapies (although you can\u2019t argue against well performed randomised clinical trials).<\/p>\n
This blog will be about my personal journey to an eczema-free-me, the therapies that helped and those that didn\u2019t. I\u2019ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each treatment and with images I can hopefully demonstrate the results. I\u2019ll give my personal recommendations and links to where you can buy any of the products I have used.<\/p>\n
Know how to treat eczema? I’d love to know your ideas, honestly I’ll try them all! Comment below and share this site with anyone who may benifit<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hello and welcome to eczemafreeme.com. My name is Mehmet and I am the author of this, what I hope to be awesome, blog. Before we start maybe it would be wise for me to introduce myself and the reasons I decided to start this site. “In my second year of university unfortunately the\u00a0eczema came back … Continue reading “Who am I and why you might find this blog useful”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48416"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48416"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48984,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48416\/revisions\/48984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eczemafreeme.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}